ARPA-H’s arthritis moonshot

The ideas and innovators shaping health care

May 18, 2023 View in browser   By Erin Schumaker, Carmen Paun and Ben Leonard THE NEXT CURES Painful joints plague many older people, with few good remedies. | AP ARPA-H wants to know whether injectable bone and cartilage regeneration, and replacement joints built from human cells could cure osteoarthritis, the degenerative joint disease in which cartilage within a joint breaks down, often causing pain, stiffness and swelling. The agency has given researchers till July 28 to submit proposals for funding. It’s the first initiative from the nascent Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, which President Joe Biden proposed in 2021 and Congress authorized last year to place high-risk, high-reward bets on health care research. Why it matters: More than 32 million people in the U.S., most of them women, have osteoarthritis and the loss of function in hands, hips or knees is among the most common types of disability, costing the U.S. more than $136 billion a year. Despite osteoarthritis's prevalence, there are few effective treatments, and the ones that do exist, like joint replacement, tend to be invasive. Often, patients don't seek treatment until later stages of the disease, when they're in severe pain. Right now, surgery is the standard treatment for advanced osteoarthritis. What’s next: Hopefully a cure, and soon. Part of ARPA-H's mission is to take on research the National Institutes of Health and private sector aren't doing and do it faster. "Part of the special sauce of what we create here is we are driven by fairly aggressive metrics to drive innovation and change," Ross Uhrich, the ARPA-H program manager for the new initiative, said during a briefing with reporters. "This is not something that takes 15, 20, 25 years to get to patients."   DON’T MISS POLITICO’S HEALTH CARE SUMMIT: The Covid-19 pandemic helped spur innovation in health care, from the wide adoption of telemedicine, health apps and online pharmacies to mRNA vaccines. But what will the next health care innovations look like? Join POLITICO on Wednesday June 7 for our Health Care Summit to explore how tech and innovation are transforming care and the challenges ahead for access and delivery in the United States. REGISTER NOW.     WELCOME TO FUTURE PULSE Yosemite National Park, Calif. | Shawn Zeller This is where we explore the ideas and innovators shaping health care. Parents trying to get their kids into selective colleges are paying online vendors with questionable practices to get their children published in research journals, ProPublica reports. It's a widespread enough problem that one high schooler told ProPublica that having a publication on your college application is "kind of a given," and that "if you don’t have one, you’re going to have to make it up in some other aspect of your application.” Share any thoughts, news, tips and feedback with Ben Leonard at bleonard@politico.com, Ruth Reader at rreader@politico.com, Carmen Paun at cpaun@politico.com or Erin Schumaker at eschumaker@politico.com. Send tips securely through SecureDrop, Signal, Telegram or WhatsApp. Today on our Pulse Check podcast, host Megan Messerly interviews Daniel Payne about the push by Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chair Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to pour nearly $200 billion into the health care system to address growing workforce shortages and financial woes of community health centers. Listen to today’s Pulse Check podcast DANGER ZONE A patient receives the Jynneos jab last summer in Los Angeles. | Mario Tama/Getty Images The first case of mpox in the U.S. was discovered one year ago in Boston, marking the beginning of an outbreak that would hit more than 400 cases a day in August. That number has dwindled to nearly zero, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently warned that it’s investigating a new cluster of cases in Chicago, raising concern of another summer spike. What’s next: People at high risk – gay and bisexual men, transgender people and others who regularly have sex with multiple partners – should get two shots of Jynneos, the mpox vaccine from Danish manufacturer Bavarian Nordic, the CDC says. An agency research study, conducted in cooperation with the research division of electronic health records provider Epic, found that two shots protected 66 percent of patients against infection. When mpox vaccines were scarce last summer, some public health officials, including those in New York City, endorsed giving patients just one shot of the two-shot regimen to stretch supplies. Even so: Vaccine effectiveness was lower than average for men aged 18 to 49 years: 58.7 percent for those fully vaccinated and 35.5 percent for those who received only one dose. The vaccine was also less effective in immunocompromised people, who make up the majority of those at high risk of the disease, the study authors warned. And nine of the 13 cases recently discovered in Chicago were among people who had received two doses of the Jynneos vaccine, the CDC said.   GET READY FOR GLOBAL TECH DAY: Join POLITICO Live as we launch our first Global Tech Day alongside London Tech Week on Thursday, June 15. Register now for continuing updates and to be a part of this momentous and program-packed day! From the blockchain, to AI, and autonomous vehicles, technology is changing how power is exercised around the world, so who will write the rules? REGISTER HERE.     WORLD VIEW The WHO isn't sold on AI. | AP The World Health Organization wants everyone to curb their enthusiasm about the near-term prospects for artificial intelligence in health care. The WHO laid out its concerns in a statement this week, noting that AI tools can: — Appear authoritative and plausible but contain serious errors — Generate and spread inaccuracies that can be hard to differentiate from reliable health information — Rely on biased inputs that yield conclusions harmful to patients The WHO asked policymakers to ensure the technology is safe and that the benefits outweigh the risks.   Follow us on Twitter Ben Leonard @_BenLeonard_ Ruth Reader @RuthReader Carmen Paun @carmenpaun Erin Schumaker @erinlschumaker   Follow us

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